France Much effort.... for nothing......

[Chris Boonzaier]

The SGA has recently put up the rolls for the officers records.... so if you are lucky you can "find your man"....

Down side is.... the quality is soooooo bad on some of them... you can barely read the names.

It was a mess up with the scanning or photos, not the source material.

they might as well not have bothered.... :-(

[PKeating]

Very typical, I'm afraid. Pay peanuts, get monkeys. Of course, they're always hyper-efficient when billing you, or pulling a bait and switch stroke.

PK

[Chris Boonzaier]

Very typical, I'm afraid. Pay peanuts, get monkeys. Of course, they're always hyper-efficient when billing you, or pulling a bait and switch stroke.

PK

It is a pity. They did fantastic work putting up the unit histories, a mega achievement... it shows they are on the right track. So far the only country to do that.

I think the problem is, the pixel amount is too small on the rolls. when you enlarge them to be able to read... they become unreadable.

best

Chris

[Djedj]

Woohoo !

Thanks for pointing up for that, Chris, this is gonna save me heaps of time !

There is a trick but the images can properly be used.

As a matter of fact the version available when reaching a new page is a poor quality image - to save loading time I guess ; you can roughly read names, so as to validate it's worth a try or not.

You can go to the full scan by clicking on the sixth icon on the left, and select "image originale" :

The immediate result is not so good, but you can expand with th seventh icon "affiche la taille réelle des images" (original size) and then :

These archives actually log the files kept at Vincennes' SHD.

The files reference will actually start with the register number (e.g. "5YF") + the file number as written in the "N° du dossier" column.

So a reference can be "5YF4900", which will point to the proper file.

As for the files, you have to go to Vincennes to actually consult them (after booking) - but being able to find references beforehand is a HUGE step forward !

And these registers actually give interesting information - date of end of service, last corps, last rank...

One has o learn to navigate through them though - and to decipher the numbers ; "5" are notoriously puzzling :

Here for instance, "N° du dossier" is "41758", and "Reversion à la veuve ou aux orphelins" (the file for the pension being transferred to the widow or orphans) is "97855"

Cheers,

Jerome